Founding the Fathers. Elizabeth A. Clark
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to get a sure grip on truth.45 The one set of lecture notes on Fisher’s course that remains does not reveal how he introduced students to primary sources or aspects of material culture, if in fact he did so.
Despite Fisher’s alleged attempt to modernize the study of Christian history, his treatment remained largely conservative as well as derivative. Many of his scholarly essays, we shall see, were devoted to warding off the assaults of more radical German scholarship.
Philip Schaff: Mercersburg and Union Theological Seminaries
Philip Schaff in his youth had served as a Privatdozent at the University of Berlin, offering lectures on the Catholic Epistles, the Gospel of John, the theology of Schleiermacher, and the doctrinal history of Protestantism.46 During his years at Mercersburg, Schaff taught courses on early, medieval, and Reformation church history, and on dogmatics—indeed, historian George Shriver reports, for one period, he taught the entire seminary curriculum. On the basis of remaining lecture notes, Shriver infers that Schaff used his class preparation as an opportunity to develop material that he would incorporate into his multivolume History of the Christian Church.47
Joining the Union Seminary faculty in 1870, Schaff was granted the Professorship of Church History only after Roswell Hitchcock’s sudden death in June 1887. In his “Autobiographical Reminiscences for My Children,” Schaff confessed, “I naturally shrank from the drudgery of preparing several courses of new lectures, and from the difficulty of filling the chair of so brilliant a lecturer as Dr. Hitchcock.” But he “had to obey,” and was inaugurated on September 22, 1887. He hoped that his move to the historical chair would enable him to finish his History of the Christian Church.48
Schaff faulted the dry and lifeless way in which church history was taught in seminaries, often approached as if it were merely a “curiosity shop.”49 “Intellectual education alone may be a curse,” he warned, as the examples of Voltaire, Rousseau, and D. F. Strauss show.50 Explaining the German educational system to American audiences, Schaff praised the “seminary” method (i.e., the seminar) as one of the most important innovations at Berlin and other German universities; he planned to introduce the method at Union.51
Schaff frequently wrote about the teaching of church history. In the last years of his life, he composed a Theological Propaedeutic, designed for beginning-level theology students, which illuminates his approach to the various subdisciplines of theological studies. The book, he claimed, is “the first original work on Propaedeutic in America,” aimed to serve for American students the same purpose as K. R. Hagenbach’s Encyclopädie und Methodologie in Germany. Although many seminaries treat church history as a mere “appendix” to other subjects, Schaff argued that it, like biblical studies, should run through all three years of coursework. Schaff advised beginners to acquire “some knowledge of the primary sources”—advice again suggesting that primary source reading was not usually the focus of regular coursework. Yet so vast are the sources, Schaff conceded, that even the greatest historians must depend on the collections, digests, and specialized monographs produced by others.52 In this concession, Schaff surely included himself, for his lengthy volumes on the history of Christianity are not always grounded in primary source investigation.
Unsurprisingly, Schaff retained a pietistic orientation in his teaching, attempting to inculcate faith as well as to provide information. He opened his lectures with a prayer: “Sanctify us by the truth; Thy Word is Truth. Amen.”53 The first hour of the day, he counseled students, before they commence their academic work, should be given over to prayer and devotion. Students are being trained as theologians, not as philosophers: they should not be encouraged to doubt everything. A special danger lies in the “pseudo-theology of rationalism—the chief tempter of the student of the present day,” meeting him at “every step in exegesis” from Genesis to Revelation. The spiritual, for Schaff, takes precedence over the purely intellectual.54 Schaff’s pious approach to academic study emulated that of evangelical German professors Neander and Tholuck.55
Which areas of concentration are most important for seminary students? Schaff advised that after the Bible, students should study Reformation history, followed by the history of their own denomination. They should choose one particular period or aspect for more exhaustive work. Note that Schaff does not here identify the patristic era as worthy of this concentrated study: it is “of far more consequence to know the exact teaching of Christ and the Apostles than that of the Fathers, Reformers and Councils,” he wrote.56
Schaff also offered practical advice to American seminarians, who were often scarcely twenty years old and still unsettled in their habits. Study systematically, Schaff urged, since time cannot be replaced. Leave light reading, such as newspapers, for the afternoon or evening. Don’t sleep more than is necessary for your health. Take exercise. Keep your body clean and vigorous; does not sound Christianity teach that “cleanliness is next to godliness”? Our model, Christ, manifested no trait of “ascetic austerity and self-mortification,” but rather was “healthy, serene, and hopeful.”57
On the academic side, Schaff urged the student to acquire a good library. He should read the Bible daily in Hebrew and Greek, making use of commentaries by Chrysostom, Augustine, and Protestants from the Reformation era to the present. Master ancient and modern philosophy, the orators, the classical poets, Schaff counseled. But don’t be a bookworm: study also the book of Nature and “the book of society.” Students should cultivate their hearts as well as their heads, and keep guard over their morals.58
Schaff’s generous spirit is revealed in the financial support he offered promising students in church history. In the 1880s, he gave copies of his books to Mercersburg Seminary (then relocated at Lancaster) to serve as prizes for student essays on church history. In 1889, he endowed a Teaching Fellowship at Union.59 Soon thereafter, he contributed half the funds for a prize essay in church history offered by the American Society of Church History.60 Late in life, he employed a junior colleague, Francis Brown, soon to be a noted scholar of the Hebrew Bible and later President of Union, to act as his assistant, paying him $1500 out of his own salary.61 And when Schaff’s favorite student, Arthur Cushman McGiffert, who succeeded him as Washburn Professor, encountered financial difficulties while studying in Germany, Schaff sent him money and encouragement.62 As noted earlier, he contributed $5000 to rescue the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers Series from collapse.63 After Schaff’s death, 1800 of his books went to the Union Seminary library.64
That Schaff was a beloved teacher seems clear from the tributes of former students. During his time at Mercersburg, Schaff—on the model of German professors—invited students to his home one evening a week, encouraging them to ask questions and join in free discussion.65 One former student, U. H. Heilman, reminisced that such evenings “reminded one of Socrates gathering around him some of the young men of Athens, asking and answering questions.”66 Joseph Henry Dubbs (later Professor of History at Franklin and Marshall College) recalled both pleasant evenings at the Schaffs’ home and his trips accompanying Schaff when he preached in surrounding communities. Teacher-student relations, Dubbs observed, then were “more free and unconventional” than in later times. Schaff’s students largely continued to follow the lines of thought that they had learned from him.67
Frederick A. Gast, who later taught Hebrew at Lancaster, testified that Schaff gave him his first lessons in that language, “when it seemed to me a wild dream that I should myself be called to teach others, however imperfectly, the principles of the language of Moses and the prophets.” But his obligation to Schaff preceded his seminary days: even before he had met Schaff, Gast reported, Schaff’s Principle of Protestantism showed him “a new standpoint from which to survey the whole realm of truth,” namely, that Christ is the principle of the entire cosmos, not only of Christianity. Moreover, the book convinced Gast that he could maintain an unshaken faith while adjusting to new truths: “I came to know what life and history might mean.”68
All three Union professors here surveyed, it is clear, made indelible impressions on their students. In student notes and tributes, as well as